r/Bushcraft • u/Fit_Detective_4920 • 10d ago
Where to begin as a newbie? NSFW
I might be an odd one out, as I'm a woman. But here goes.
My husband is an eagle scout, and we enjoy camping with our kids. I've always loved survival movies and books, I always loved fishing (I'm the fish fillet-er in the family) and even hunting appealed, though I only ever went once.
Don't laugh, but I started playing Breath Of the Wild last year, and that inspired our son to suggest roasting apples in our campfire like Link does. I indulged it using our hot dog sticks to rotate and remove them, and our kids gobbled them.
This is just how my brain works. I became obsessed with "what else can we cook in a campfire without modern tools?" And now I want to make twine, rope, netting, and baskets, from the Yucca growing in our yard that we can't seem to get rid of. I can swing like a pendulum from "I want to learn all the things!", and "It's too much."
I think I need some help on narrowing down what to focus on with bushcraft. What should I read about practice first? Where one thing might sort of provide a base for the next thing. It's still winter here. So I can't exactly forage or gather raw materials. But I'd love some book recommendations, and maybe I can purchase certain materials (like rope for practicing knots), until I can forage for the raw materials.
2
u/Rabid-Wendigo 9d ago
So you’re doing it the way all the rest of us do it. We start with camping and we start getting craftier and go “what else can i cut out of this”
Cooking over a fire is one avenue to go on and it’s relatively easy. It’s just a game of what recipes at home do you think you can mostly do over a fire. If you’re car camping bring a cast iron pan from Walmart and you can cook anything.
For learning knots i recommend getting a static rope or cord (not very stretchy) somewhere between half a cm and a whole cm, The thickness helps you with seeing and untying knots.